Assessment of Forest Fragmentation in District Shopian Using Multi-temporal Land Cover (A GIS Approach)

Arshad Amin^1, and Shahab Fazal²

¹Department of Geography and Environmental Studies, Adigrat University, Ethiopia

²Department of Geography, Aligarh Muslim University, India

Cite this paper:
Arshad Amin and Shahab Fazal. Assessment of Forest Fragmentation in District Shopian Using Multi-temporal Land Cover (A GIS Approach). Journal of Geosciences and Geomatics. 2017; 5(1):12-23. doi: 10.12691/jgg-5-1-2

Abstract

Man has been using land since the beginning of human civilization. Over the time, growing population demanded more land which expanded its use, so forests that share their borders with built-up or agricultural land use are prone to further degradation than the forests that share their borders with non-forest, natural land cover e.g., wetland, water bodies, grassland etc. The increased use led to increase in the rate of degradation and fragmentation of forest land. Deforestation is the prime cause for the forest land fragmentation and dense forests are very sensitive to this phenomenon where roads are one of the major causes of fragmentation. The present study focusses on the land use dynamics and forest landscape fragmentation of Shopian district of hill state of Jammu and Kashmir from 1995 to 2015. The study is based on remotely sensed data using landscape fragmentation model in GIS. The analysis shows that agricultural and built-up land use has continued to increase at the cost of rich forest cover which has not only significantly decreased but is in the deplorable state. Forest land fragmentation analysis revealed the increase in deforestation and the degradation of the dense forest into small and isolated patches.

Keywords:
deforestation forest land fragmentation forest GIS land use

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

References:

[1]	Aasim M, Farooq M, Amin A, Rashid H. GEOSPATIAL MONITORING OF FORESTS A CASE STUDY OF PIRPANJAL FOREST DIVISION, J&K, International Journal of Remote Sensing & Geoscience, vol 3(3), pp. 16-25, 2015.
[2]	Amin, A. and Fazal, S. Land Transformation Analysis Using Remote Sensing and GIS Techniques (A Case Study). Journal of Geographic Information System, 4, pp. 229-236, 2012.
[3]	Collingham Yc, Huntley B. Impacts of habitat fragmentation and patch size upon migration rates. Ecol Appl 10: 131-144, 2000.
[4]	Fahrig L. Effects of habitat fragmentation on biodiversity. Annu Rev Ecol Evol S 34: 487-515, 2003.
[5]	FAO, State of the world’s forests, Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations, Rome, 1997.
[6]	Fazal, S and Amin, A. Impact of Urban Land Transformation on Water Bodies in Srinagar City, India. Journal of Environmental Protection, 2 (2), pp. 142-153, 2011.
[7]	Forman, T. T. and Sperling, D., Road Ecology. Science and Solutions, Island Press, Washington, DC, p. 481, 2003.
[8]	Jensen, J. R. Introductory digital image processing: a remote sensing perspective. Englewood Cliffs, N.J., Prentice-Hall, 1986.
[9]	Thomson M. J.. Forest Fragmentation, Federation of Ontario Naturalists (FON) www.ontarionature.org, 2015.
[10]	Mitch and Gosselink. Landscape Ecological Planning Through a multi-scale characterization of pattern: Studies in Western Ghats, South India. Environ. Monit. Assess. pp. 215-233, 1993.
[11]	Myers, N. TROPICAL FOREST: the main deforestation fronts. Environ. Conserv., 1993, 20, 9-16. NASA, Tropical deforestation. NASA facts, FS-1998-11-120- GSFC, National Aeronautics and Space Administration, Goddard Space Flight Center, 1998.
[12]	Negi S.S. Forest policy and five year plan, A Handbook of Forestry, IBH Dehradun pp. 102-120, 1986.
[13]	Parent, J. Landscape Fragmentation Analysis (version 2) University of Connecticut Press, USA, 2009.
[14]	Richards, J.F and Flint E.P. Historical land use and carbon estimates for South and South east Asia 1880-1980, in Daniel R.C. (Ed.), ORNI/CDIAC-61, NDP-046. Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Tennessee, U.S.A. pp. 326, 1995.
[15]	Roy P.S, Murthy M.S.R, and Roy A, et al. Forest Fragmentation in India, Current Science, vo 105(6), pp 774-780, 2013.
[16]	Roy, P. S. and Roy, A.. Land use and land cover change in India: a remote sensing & GIS perspective. J. Indian Inst. Sci., 90, 489-502, 2010.
[17]	Sarma, V.V.L.N., Murali Krishna, G., Hema Malini, B., & Nageswara Rao, K. Land-use/Land-cover Change Detection through Remote Sensing and its Climatic Implications in the Godavari Delta Region, Journal of the Indian Society of Remote Sensing. Vol. 29, No.1&2, 2001.
[18]	Sarmah K., Jha L.K. and Tiwari B.K. Spatio-temporal changes in land uses and land cover due to human interference in Meghalaya, India: A case study of Wah Shella microwatershed, Journal of Geography and Regional Planning, Vol. 4 (6), Pp. 338-343, 2011.
[19]	Skole, D. and Tucker, C.. Tropical deforestation and habitat fragmentation in the Amazon: satellite data from 1978 to 1988. Science, 260, 1905-1910, 1991.
[20]	Tian H, Banger K, Bo T and Dadhwal Vk. History of land use in India during 1880-2010: Large-scale land transformations reconstructed from satellite data and historical archives, Global and Planetary Change, vol 121, pp. 78-88, 2015.
[21]	Vital Forest Graphics. UNEP United Nations Forum on Forests. pp. 4, 2009.
[22]	Vogt, P., Riitters, K. H., Estreguil, C., Kozak, J., Wade, T. G. and Wickham, J. D. Mapping spatial patterns with morphological image processing. Landscape Ecology, 22,171-177, 2007.
[23]	Wilcove Ds, Mclellan Ch, Dobson Ap. Habitat fragmentation in the temperate zone. In: Soul´e ME (ed) Conservation Biology: The Science of Scarcity and Diversity. Sinauer Associates Inc., Sunderland, 1986.