Abstract:
Protected areas in South Asia face significant challenges due to human disturbance and
deforestation. The ongoing debate surrounds the recent surge in illegal encroachment
of forest buffer zones in the Musali divisional secretariat division (DSD), which has
led to a significant loss of forest cover over the past three decades. In this context,
detecting changes in forest cover, assessing forest health, and evaluating environmental
quality are crucial for sustainable forest management. As such, our efforts focused on
assessing forest cover dynamics, forest health, and environmental conditions in the
DSD from 1988 to 2022. We employed standardized image processing techniques,
utilizing Landsat-5 (TM) and Landsat-8 (OLI) images. However, the forest area in
the DSD has shown minimal changes, and environmental conditions and forest health
have illustrated considerable spatial-temporal variations over the 34 years. The results
indicated that 8.5 km2 (1.9%) of forest cover in the DSD has been converted to other
land use classes. Overall, the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) has
declined over time, while Land Surface Temperature (LST) exhibits an increasing trend.
The regression results demonstrated a robust inverse relationship between LST and
NDVI. The declining vegetation conditions and the increasing LST contribute to an
increase in environmental criticality. The derived maps and indices will be beneficial
for forest authorities in identifying highly sensitive locations. Additionally, they could
enable land use planners to develop sustainable land management strategies.
