scholarly journals Assessment of Large Scale Land Cover Change Classifications and Drivers of Deforestation in Indonesia

Author(s):  
A. Wijaya ◽  
R. A. Sugardiman Budiharto ◽  
A. Tosiani ◽  
D. Murdiyarso ◽  
L.V. Verchot

Indonesia possesses the third largest tropical forests coverage following Brazilian Amazon and Congo Basin regions. This country, however, suffered from the highest deforestation rate surpassing deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon in 2012. National capacity for forest change assessment and monitoring has been well-established in Indonesia and the availability of national forest inventory data could largely assist the country to report their forest carbon stocks and change over more than two decades. This work focuses for refining forest cover change mapping and deforestation estimate at national scale applying over 10,000 scenes of Landsat scenes, acquired in 1990, 1996, 2000, 2003, 2006, 2009, 2011 and 2012. Pre-processing of the data includes, geometric corrections and image mosaicking. The classification of mosaic Landsat data used multi-stage visual observation approaches, verified using ground observations and comparison with other published materials. There are 23 land cover classes identified from land cover data, presenting spatial information of forests, agriculture, plantations, non-vegetated lands and other land use categories. We estimated the magnitude of forest cover change and assessed drivers of forest cover change over time. Forest change trajectories analysis was also conducted to observe dynamics of forest cover across time. This study found that careful interpretations of satellite data can provide reliable information on forest cover and change. Deforestation trend in Indonesia was lower in 2000-2012 compared to 1990-2000 periods. We also found that over 50% of forests loss in 1990 remains unproductive in 2012. Major drivers of forest conversion in Indonesia range from shrubs/open land, subsistence agriculture, oil palm expansion, plantation forest and mining. The results were compared with other available datasets and we obtained that the MOF data yields reliable estimate of deforestation.

2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 217-225
Author(s):  
MM Rahman ◽  
MAT Pramanik ◽  
MI Islam ◽  
S Razia

Mangroves have been planting in the coastal belt of Bangladesh to protect the inhabitants of the coastal areas from cyclones and storm surges. Nijhum Dwip is located at the southern part of Hatiya Island. Most part of the island has been planted with the mangroves in the 1970s and 1980s; while parts of the mangroves have been deforested during the past few decades. The objectives of this research were to delineate and quantify the changes in the extent of mangroves in the island. The Landsat data of 1989, 2001, 2010 and 2018 have been utilized in the study. Three major land covers, namely forest, water and other land have been interpreted and delineated by using on-screen digitizing. The quantity of mangrove forest loss in the island is estimated as 1,024 ha, while 395 ha were afforested during 1989-2018. In the decadal change analysis, it was revealed that net forest cover change was higher in 2000s compared to other two decades and it was -425 ha. The result of the study is helpful to understand the extent and pattern of forest conversion in the island and to halt further forest loss and conserve the remaining forest. J. Environ. Sci. & Natural Resources, 11(1-2): 217-225 2018


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sly Wongchuig Correa ◽  
Jhan Carlo Espinoza ◽  
Hans Segura ◽  
Thomas Condom ◽  
Clémentine Junquas

<p>Large evidences support the strong impacts on rainfall amount and the increasing of dry-season length on the Amazonian forest. All of these effects are usually attributed to large scale atmospheric circulation and to land cover changes as part of anthropogenic effects. In this research we assess statistical and modeling approaches to investigate the interaction between changes in forest cover and hydroclimate processes on a regional and local scale.</p><p>Henceforth, the deforestation areas and climatic indexes for the southern Amazon basin (south of 14°S) were evaluated. The deforestation map was estimated for the 1992-2018 period, based on global land cover maps at 300 m of spatial resolution produced by the European Space Agency (ESA) Climate Change Initiative (CCI) by using several remote sensing datasets. The CHIRPS rainfall dataset (P) for the 1981-2018 period was used to estimate the dry day frequency (DDF, P<1mm) and the wet day frequency (WDF, P>10mm). In addition, the mean actual seasonal evapotranspiration (AET) was GLEAM and ET-Amazon evapotranspiration datasets for the 1980-2018 and 2003-2013 periods respectively. In order to determine the local and the regional climatic effect for each pixel of the climatic index (DDF, WDF and AET), the deforestation fraction was estimated considering different spatial radii of influence (20 to 50 km).</p><p>The first results indicate a particular pattern in the southern Bolivian Amazon where two groups of areas were identified, considering the common period of analysis (1992-2018). One of them shows a significant relationship between increasing trend of DDF and decreasing trend of WDF while deforestation fraction is high, what mainly occurs during the wet season. In addition, this region is clearly placed in areas with values of deforestation fraction above ~30%, a closest value to the usually estimated Amazon Tipping Point (~40%). Below this value, the second group is also located in regions with positive trends of DDF and negative trends of WDF. This region has probably a strongest link with the large-scale climate.</p><p>Considering these preliminary results, the statistical approaches developed in this research could give some insights about the interactions between forest change and the regional hydro climatology, which might improve the understanding of this interaction based on large-scale hydrological modeling.</p>


2017 ◽  
Vol 1 (02) ◽  
pp. 100-113
Author(s):  
OLANI GANFURE JALETA ◽  
HABTE JEBESSA DEBELLA

Jaleta OG, Jebessa H. 2018. The impact of large scale agriculture on forest and wildlife in Diga Woreda, Western Ethiopia. Asian J Agric 1: 100-113. Large-scale agriculture uses agricultural machinery to mechanize the practices of agriculture. It is one of the leading causes of the loss of forest and wildlife in many countries including our country, Ethiopia. Information on forest cover change that occurred from 1986 to 2006 in Diga Woreda/district (Woyessa Dimtu, Bekiltu Gudina, and Melka Beti Jirma Kebeles) was compared with the present time using Geographic Information System (GIS). The objective of this study was to investigate the impact of large-scale agriculture on forest cover change by using the satellite image of the study area and other data collecting methods such as household's interview, KI, FGD and observation (survey) to detect its effect on wildlife. The study employed both qualitative and quantitative data as well as primary and secondary data sources to collect necessary information. The information providers were purposively selected from sample ‘kebeles' based on their age and experiences, that is, to get a detail and accurate information elders and experts who have lived in the area for many years and who know more how and when the Hanger-Didessa state farm had established were selected. The state farm covered a large area, that is, about four districts such as Sasiga, Diga, Arjo and Guto Gida. For this study, Diga was selected because of its socio-economic characteristics, deforested (degraded) area, local loss of larger mammals and forest cover changes observed in the district. The descriptive research method was used to assess community's knowledge, perception, skill, and feeling about the impact of Local Study Area (LSA) on forest and wildlife in the area. Land cover change analysis for 1986 to 2006 showed that the land cover of the study area is classified as grazing, wood, agricultural, settlement and degraded lands. The result of the analysis showed that agriculture, settlement and degraded lands increased from 19.68% to 32.72%, 12.12% to 26.85% and 2.76% to 4.72% respectively in an expense of a decrease in the grass (grazing) and woodlands. Therefore, LSA is the primary cause for the loss of forest and wildlife in the study area.


2020 ◽  
Vol 118 (6) ◽  
pp. 598-612
Author(s):  
Heather Grybas ◽  
Russell G Congalton ◽  
Andrew F Howard

Abstract New Hampshire’s forests are vitally important to the state’s economy; however, there are indications that the state is experiencing a continuous loss in forest cover. We sought to investigate forest cover trends in New Hampshire. A baseline trend in forest cover between 1996 and 2010 was established using National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Coastal Change Analysis Program land cover data. A land cover map was then generated from Landsat imagery to extend the baseline trend to 2018. Results show that the state has experienced a continual decline in forest cover with the annual net loss steadily increasing from 0.14% between 1996 and 2001 to 0.27% between 2010 and 2018. Additionally, the more urbanized counties in southern New Hampshire are experiencing some of the greatest rates of net forest loss, most likely because of urbanization and agricultural expansion. This study demonstrated an effective methodology for tracking forest cover change and will hopefully inform future forest use policies.


Author(s):  
Barira Rashid ◽  
Javed Iqbal

Forest Cover dynamics and its understanding is essential for a country’s social, environmental, and political engagements. This research provides a methodical approach for the assessment of forest cover along Karakoram Highway. It has great ecological and economic significance because it’s a part of China-Pakistan Economic Corridor. Landsat 4, 5 TM, Landsat 7 ETM and Landsat 8 OLI imagery for the years 1990, 2000, 2010 and 2016 respectively were subjected to supervised classification in ArcMap 10.5 to identify forest change. The study area was categorized into five major land use land cover classes i.e., Forest, vegetation, urban, open land and snow cover. Results from post classification forest cover change maps illustrated notable decrease of almost 26 % forest cover over the time period of 26 years. The accuracy assessment revealed the kappa coefficients 083, 0.78, 0.77 and 0.85, respectively. Major reason for this change is an observed replacement of native forest cover with urban areas (12.5 %) and vegetation (18.6 %) However, there is no significant change in the reserved forests along the study area that contributes only 2.97 % of the total forest cover. The extensive forest degradation and risk prone topography of the region has increased the environmental risk of landslides. Hence, effective policies and forest management is needed to protect not only the environmental and aesthetic benefits of the forest cover but also to manage the disaster risks. Apart from the forest assessment, this research gives an insight of land cover dynamics, along with causes and consequences, thereby showing the forest degradation hotspots.


Author(s):  
M. D. Velasco Gomez ◽  
R. Beuchle ◽  
Y. Shimabukuro ◽  
R. Grecchi ◽  
D. Simonetti ◽  
...  

Monitoring tropical forest cover is central to biodiversity preservation, terrestrial carbon stocks, essential ecosystem and climate functions, and ultimately, sustainable economic development. The Amazon forest is the Earth’s largest rainforest, and despite intensive studies on current deforestation rates, relatively little is known as to how these compare to historic (pre 1985) deforestation rates. We quantified land cover change between 1975 and 2014 in the so-called Arc of Deforestation of the Brazilian Amazon, covering the southern stretch of the Amazon forest and part of the Cerrado biome. We applied a consistent method that made use of data from Landsat sensors: Multispectral Scanner (MSS), Thematic Mapper (TM), Enhanced Thematic Mapper Plus (ETM+) and Operational Land Imager (OLI). We acquired suitable images from the US Geological Survey (USGS) for five epochs: 1975, 1990, 2000, 2010, and 2014. We then performed land cover analysis for each epoch using a systematic sample of 156 sites, each one covering 10 km × 10 km, located at the confluence point of integer degree latitudes and longitudes. An object-based classification of the images was performed with five land cover classes: tree cover, tree cover mosaic, other wooded land, other land cover, and water. The automatic classification results were corrected by visual interpretation, and, when available, by comparison with higher resolution imagery. Our results show a decrease of forest cover of 24.2% in the last 40 years in the Brazilian Arc of Deforestation, with an average yearly net forest cover change rate of -0.71% for the 39 years considered.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Victor Brovkin ◽  
Lena Boysen ◽  
Julia Pongratz ◽  
Nicolas Vuichard ◽  
Philippe Peylin ◽  
...  

<p>We present first results of idealized deforestation experiment designed within the Land Use Model Intercomparison Project (LUMIP). In order to obtain a robust signal-to-noise ratio and to harmonize deforestation implementation across participating ESMs, global forest extent is linearly decreased by 20 million km<sup>2</sup> for the 30% of most forested grid cells over a period of 50 years starting from pre-industrial climate conditions. This experimental setup is in favor of predominantly tropical deforestation patterns, however, there is also substantial boreal deforestation. In this experiment, atmospheric and oceanic physical processes respond to large-scale deforestation while other forcings such as atmospheric CO<sub>2</sub> concentration and aerosol load are kept constant at the pre-industrial level.</p><p>First analysis of results from ESMs participating in the LUMIP experiments reveal a general cooling trend in response to deforestation, although a spread in an amplitude of response is substantial. In boreal region there is significant cooling effect, presumably due to an increase in surface albedo, while tropical deforestation results in a regional warming in most of models. A sensitivity of temperature change per forest fraction change on a grid cell level, ∂T/∂F, likely could be used as a generic response for any forest change scenario, although it is complicated by mixing together local and non-local effects. We also quantified so-called “zero effect latitude” at which forest cover change does not have pronounced biogeophysical effect. It is located in northern subtropics in most models.</p><p>Analyses of ensemble-members of three models (MPI-ESM1.2-LR, IPSL-CM6A-LR, and CESM2) indicate that the “time of emergence” of climate response, when signal becomes larger than a noise, is quite different among the models. However, when we compare the “deforested fraction of emergence”, the model responses become much more coherent. Biomass and soil carbon storages are decreasing with time, and their “time of emergence” is much shorter comparing to the temperature and precipitation. More results of biogeophysical and biogeochemical responses to deforestation will be presented.</p>


2003 ◽  
Vol 79 (1) ◽  
pp. 132-146 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dennis Yemshanov ◽  
Ajith H Perera

We reviewed the published knowledge on forest succession in the North American boreal biome for its applicability in modelling forest cover change over large extents. At broader scales, forest succession can be viewed as forest cover change over time. Quantitative case studies of forest succession in peer-reviewed literature are reliable sources of information about changes in forest canopy composition. We reviewed the following aspects of forest succession in literature: disturbances; pathways of post-disturbance forest cover change; timing of successional steps; probabilities of post-disturbance forest cover change, and effects of geographic location and ecological site conditions on forest cover change. The results from studies in the literature, which were mostly based on sample plot observations, appeared to be sufficient to describe boreal forest cover change as a generalized discrete-state transition process, with the discrete states denoted by tree species dominance. In this paper, we outline an approach for incorporating published knowledge on forest succession into stochastic simulation models of boreal forest cover change in a standardized manner. We found that the lack of details in the literature on long-term forest succession, particularly on the influence of pre-disturbance forest cover composition, may be limiting factors in parameterizing simulation models. We suggest that the simulation models based on published information can provide a good foundation as null models, which can be further calibrated as detailed quantitative information on forest cover change becomes available. Key words: probabilistic model, transition matrix, boreal biome, landscape ecology


Land ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 173
Author(s):  
Changjun Gu ◽  
Yili Zhang ◽  
Linshan Liu ◽  
Lanhui Li ◽  
Shicheng Li ◽  
...  

Land use and land cover (LULC) changes are regarded as one of the key drivers of ecosystem services degradation, especially in mountain regions where they may provide various ecosystem services to local livelihoods and surrounding areas. Additionally, ecosystems and habitats extend across political boundaries, causing more difficulties for ecosystem conservation. LULC in the Kailash Sacred Landscape (KSL) has undergone obvious changes over the past four decades; however, the spatiotemporal changes of the LULC across the whole of the KSL are still unclear, as well as the effects of LULC changes on ecosystem service values (ESVs). Thus, in this study we analyzed LULC changes across the whole of the KSL between 2000 and 2015 using Google Earth Engine (GEE) and quantified their impacts on ESVs. The greatest loss in LULC was found in forest cover, which decreased from 5443.20 km2 in 2000 to 5003.37 km2 in 2015 and which mainly occurred in KSL-Nepal. Meanwhile, the largest growth was observed in grassland (increased by 548.46 km2), followed by cropland (increased by 346.90 km2), both of which mainly occurred in KSL-Nepal. Further analysis showed that the expansions of cropland were the major drivers of the forest cover change in the KSL. Furthermore, the conversion of cropland to shrub land indicated that farmland abandonment existed in the KSL during the study period. The observed forest degradation directly influenced the ESV changes in the KSL. The total ESVs in the KSL decreased from 36.53 × 108 USD y−1 in 2000 to 35.35 × 108 USD y−1 in 2015. Meanwhile, the ESVs of the forestry areas decreased by 1.34 × 108 USD y−1. This shows that the decrease of ESVs in forestry was the primary cause to the loss of total ESVs and also of the high elasticity. Our findings show that even small changes to the LULC, especially in forestry areas, are noteworthy as they could induce a strong ESV response.


2013 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 619-635 ◽  
Author(s):  
N. Köplin ◽  
B. Schädler ◽  
D. Viviroli ◽  
R. Weingartner

Abstract. Changes in land cover alter the water balance components of a catchment, due to strong interactions between soils, vegetation and the atmosphere. Therefore, hydrological climate impact studies should also integrate scenarios of associated land cover change. To reflect two severe climate-induced changes in land cover, we applied scenarios of glacier retreat and forest cover increase that were derived from the temperature signals of the climate scenarios used in this study. The climate scenarios were derived from ten regional climate models from the ENSEMBLES project. Their respective temperature and precipitation changes between the scenario period (2074–2095) and the control period (1984–2005) were used to run a hydrological model. The relative importance of each of the three types of scenarios (climate, glacier, forest) was assessed through an analysis of variance (ANOVA). Altogether, 15 mountainous catchments in Switzerland were analysed, exhibiting different degrees of glaciation during the control period (0–51%) and different degrees of forest cover increase under scenarios of change (12–55% of the catchment area). The results show that even an extreme change in forest cover is negligible with respect to changes in runoff, but it is crucial as soon as changes in evaporation or soil moisture are concerned. For the latter two variables, the relative impact of forest change is proportional to the magnitude of its change. For changes that concern 35% of the catchment area or more, the effect of forest change on summer evapotranspiration is equally or even more important than the climate signal. For catchments with a glaciation of 10% or more in the control period, the glacier retreat significantly determines summer and annual runoff. The most important source of uncertainty in this study, though, is the climate scenario and it is highly recommended to apply an ensemble of climate scenarios in the impact studies. The results presented here are valid for the climatic region they were tested for, i.e., a humid, mid-latitude mountainous environment. They might be different for regions where the evaporation is a major component of the water balance, for example. Nevertheless, a hydrological climate-impact study that assesses the additional impacts of forest and glacier change is new so far and provides insight into the question whether or not it is necessary to account for land cover changes as part of climate change impacts on hydrological systems.


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