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Murthy, M. S. R.; Gilani, H.; Karky, B. S.; Sharma, E.; Sandker, M.; Koju, U. A.; Sandker, M.; Koju, U. A.; Khanal, S.; Poudel, M.
Background The reliable monitoring, reporting and verification (MRV) of carbon emissions and removals from the forest sector is an important part of the efforts on reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD+)
. Forest-dependent local communities are engaged to contribute to MRV through community-based monitoring systems. The efficiency of such monitoring systems could be improved through the rational integration of the studies at permanent plots with the geospatial technologies. This article presents a case study of integrating community-based measurements at permanent plots at the foothills of central Nepal and biomass maps that were developed using GeoEye-1 and IKONS satellite images. Results The use of very-high-resolution satellite-based tree cover parameters, including crown projected area (CPA), crown density and crown size classes improves salience, reliability and legitimacy of the community-based survey of 0.04% intensity at the lower cost than increasing intensity of the community-based survey to 0.14% level (2.5 USD/ha vs. 7.5 USD/ha). Conclusion The proposed REDD+ MRV complementary system is the first of its kind and demonstrates the enhancement of information content, accuracy of reporting and reduction in cost. It also allows assessment of the efficacy of community-based forest management and extension to national scale.
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Nepal, a Himalayan country, is situated on the southern slopes of the central Himalayas and represents about one-third of its whole length
. Nepal has a population of around 26.5 million and a large proportion of this rely upon land-based activities for their livelihoods. Its elevation ranges 60–8848 masl which constitutes 10 major ecoregions providing diverse ecosystem services crucial for its inhabitants as well as downstream populations. At the ecosystem level, changes in structure, function, patterns of disturbance, and potential impacts of climate change on species are notable concerns. Earth Observation (EO) technologies are being applied for the monitoring and assessment of Nepal on various scales. Since recently, EO supported assessments are also being linked to decision-making processes. In this chapter, we review the status of EO based assessment of key ecosystem components, including forests, rangelands, agro-ecosystems, and wetlands in Nepal. The chapter also looks at the current information gaps and potential use of upcoming satellite technology developments in the context of Nepal
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This study illustrates how a private sector- Plantec Coffee Estate (P) Ltd was able to successfully bring a positive change in restoring degraded landscape through private investment
. Before establishment of agroforestry (1994), the land use was dominated by cultivated (73.2%), barren land (17.1%) and shrub/bushes (6.3%). Now 81.2% of area is covered by forest, out of which 52% has closed canopy. The total carbon stock of an area was found to be 6795 tons (equivalent to 24,939 tCO2), which cost would be USD 124,693 at the rate of 5 USD per tCO2. This finding also highlighted the fact that agroforestry in the Hindu Kush Himalayan (HKH) region is a suitable biological mitigation intervention that contributes to NDC targets and REDD+ objectives
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The Himalayan mountain forest ecosystem has been degrading since the British ruled the area in the 1850s
. Local understanding of the patterns and processes of degradation is desperately required to devise management strategies to halt this degradation and provide long-term sustainability. This work comprises a satellite image based study in combination with national expert validation to generate sub-district level statistics for forest cover over the Western Himalaya, Pakistan, which accounts for approximately 67% of the total forest cover of the country. The time series of forest cover maps (1990, 2000, 2010) reveal extensive deforestation in the area. Indeed, approximately 170,684 ha of forest has been lost, which amounts to 0.38% per year clear cut or severely degraded during the last 20 years. A significant increase in the rate of deforestation is observed in the second half of the study period, where much of the loss occurs at the western borders along with Afghanistan. The current study is the first systematic and comprehensive effort to map changes to forest cover in Northern Pakistan. Deforestation hotspots identified at the sub-district level provide important insight into deforestation patterns, which may facilitate the development of appropriate forest conservation and management strategies in the country
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Murthy, M. S. R.; Gurung, D. R.; Qamer, F. M.; Bajracharya, S.; Gilani, H.; Uddin, K.; Matin, M.; Bajracharya, B.; Anderson, E.; Limaye, A.
The Hindu Kush Himalayas (HKH) region with 210 million people living in the region poses significant scientific and technological challenges for livelihood improvement due to subsistence economy, livelihood insecurity, poverty, and climate change
. The inaccessibility and complex mountain environmental settings carved special niche for Earth Observation (EO) science and significant contributions were made in the food security and disaster risk reduction sectors. The differentiated capacities of users to develop and use EO capabilities, challenges in outreaching the EO products to last mile users call for innovative ways of packaging EO products into actionable knowledge and services. This calls for great degree of reformation on EO community to tailor-made region specific EO sensors and models, mechanisms of synergizing EO knowledge with local traditional systems in addressing multiscale, and integrated end-to-end solutions. The paper addresses prospects and challenges of 2015–2030 to achieve success in three critical livelihood support themes viz food security, floods, and forest-based carbon mitigation. Different improvements in EO sensor and models to extend less than a day, all-weather imaging, improved hydro-meteorological forecasts, vegetation stress, and community carbon monitoring models are identified as priority areas of improvement. We envisage and propose mechanisms on how these EO advances could amalgamate into Essential HKH Variables (EHVs) on the lines of global Essential Climate Variables (ECVs) to provide turnkey-based actionable knowledge and services through global and regional cooperation. The complex web of users and orienting them toward adoption of EO services through multi-tier awareness, expertise development, policy advocacy, and institutionalization is also discussed. The paper concludes that the EO community needs to reform significantly in blending their science and applications with user-driven, need-based domains to provide better societal services and HKH livelihood transformation
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Qin, Y.; Xiao, X.; Dong, J.; Zhang, G.; Roy, P. S.; Joshi, P. K.; Gilani, H.; Murthy, M. S. R.; Jin, C.; Wang, J.; Zhang, Y.; Chen, B.; Menarguez, M. A.; Biradar, C. M.; Bajgain, R.; Li, X.; Dai, S.; Hou, Y.; Xin, F.; Moore III, B.
Extensive forest changes have occurred in monsoon Asia, substantially affecting climate, carbon cycle and biodiversity
. Accurate forest cover maps at fine spatial resolutions are required to qualify and quantify these effects. In this study, an algorithm was developed to map forests in 2010, with the use of structure and biomass information from the Advanced Land Observation System (ALOS) Phased Array L-band Synthetic Aperture Radar (PALSAR) mosaic dataset and the phenological information from MODerate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MOD13Q1 and MOD09A1) products. Our forest map (PALSARMOD50 m F/NF) was assessed through randomly selected ground truth samples from high spatial resolution images and had an overall accuracy of 95%. Total area of forests in monsoon Asia in 2010 was estimated to be ~6.3 × 106 km2. The distribution of evergreen and deciduous forests agreed reasonably well with the median Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) in winter. PALSARMOD50 m F/NF map showed good spatial and areal agreements with selected forest maps generated by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA F/NF), European Space Agency (ESA F/NF), Boston University (MCD12Q1 F/NF), Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO FRA), and University of Maryland (Landsat forests), but relatively large differences and uncertainties in tropical forests and evergreen and deciduous forests
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Satellite imagery has proven extremely useful for repetitive timeline-based data collection, because it offers a synoptic view and enables fast processing of large quantities of data
. The changes in tree crown number and land cover in a very remote watershed (area 1305 ha) in Nepal were analyzed using a QuickBird image from 2006 and an IKONOS image from 2011. A geographic object-based image analysis (GEOBIA) was carried out using the region-growing technique for tree crown detection, delineation, and change assessment, and a multiresolution technique was used for land cover mapping and change analysis. The coefficient of determination for tree crown detection and delineation was 0.97 for QuickBird and 0.99 for IKONOS, calculated using a line-intercept transect method with 10 randomly selected windows (1×1 ha). The number of tree crowns decreased from 47,121 in 2006 to 41,689 in 2011, a loss of approximately 90 trees per month on average; the area of needle-leaved forest was reduced by 140 ha (23%) over the same period. Analysis of widely available very-high-resolution satellite images using GEOBIA techniques offers a cost-effective method for detecting changes in tree crown number and land cover in remote mountain valleys; the results provide the information needed to support improved local-level planning and forest management in such areas
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BACKGROUND:Forests are fundamental in maintaining water supplies, providing economic goods, mitigating climate change, and maintaining biodiversity, thus providing many of the world's poorest with income, food and medicine
. Too often, forested lands are treated as "wastelands" or "free" and are easily cleared for agricultural and infrastructure expansion.METHODS:In this paper, the sustainability of two forest ecosystems (state and community/private owned) was evaluated using SPOT-5 satellite images of 2005 and 2011. This study was conducted in a sub-watershed area covering 468 km2, of which 201 km2 is managed by the state and 267 km2 by community/private ownership in the Murree Galliat region of Punjab Province of Pakistan. A participatory approach was adopted for the delineation and demarcation of forest boundaries. The Geographic Object-Based Image Analysis (GEOBIA) technique was used for identification and mapping of ten Land Cover (LC) features.RESULTS:The results show that between the years 2005 to 2011, a total of 55 km2 (24 km2 in state-owned forest and 31 km2 in community/private forest) was converted from forest to non-forest. The conclusion is that conservation is more effective in state-owned forests than in the community/private forests.CONCLUSIONS:These findings may help to mobilize community awareness and identify effective initiatives for improved management of community/private forest land for other regions of Pakistan
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Karna, Y. K.; Hussin, Y. A.; Gilani, H.; Bronsveld, M. C.; Murthy, M. S. R.; Qamer, F. M.; Karky, B. S.; Bhattarai, T.; Aigong, X.; Baniya, C. B.
Integration of WorldView-2 satellite image with small footprint airborne LiDAR data for estimation of tree carbon at species level has been investigated in tropical forests of Nepal
. This research aims to quantify and map carbon stock for dominant tree species in Chitwan district of central Nepal. Object based image analysis and supervised nearest neighbor classification methods were deployed for tree canopy retrieval and species level classification respectively. Initially, six dominant tree species (Shorea robusta, Schima wallichii, Lagerstroemia parviflora, Terminalia tomentosa, Mallotus philippinensis and Semecarpus anacardium) were able to be identified and mapped through image classification. The result showed a 76% accuracy of segmentation and 1970.99 as best average separability. Tree canopy height model (CHM) was extracted based on LiDAR’s first and last return from an entire study area. On average, a significant correlation coefficient (r) between canopy projection area (CPA) and carbon; height and carbon; and CPA and height were obtained as 0.73, 0.76 and 0.63, respectively for correctly detected trees. Carbon stock model validation results showed regression models being able to explain up to 94%, 78%, 76%, 84% and 78% of variations in carbon estimation for the following tree species: S. robusta, L. parviflora, T. tomentosa, S. wallichii and others (combination of rest tree species)
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Satellite imagery has proven extremely useful for repetitive timeline-based data collection, because it offers a synoptic view and enables fast processing of large quantities of data
. The changes in tree crown number and land cover in a very remote watershed (area 1305 ha) in Nepal were analyzed using a QuickBird image from 2006 and an IKONOS image from 2011. A geographic object-based image analysis (GEOBIA) was carried out using the region-growing technique for tree crown detection, delineation, and change assessment, and a multiresolution technique was used for land cover mapping and change analysis. The coefficient of determination for tree crown detection and delineation was 0.97 for QuickBird and 0.99 for IKONOS, calculated using a line-intercept transect method with 10 randomly selected windows (1×1 ha). The number of tree crowns decreased from 47,121 in 2006 to 41,689 in 2011, a loss of approximately 90 trees per month on average; the area of needle-leaved forest was reduced by 140 ha (23%) over the same period. Analysis of widely available very-high-resolution satellite images using GEOBIA techniques offers a cost-effective method for detecting changes in tree crown number and land cover in remote mountain valleys; the results provide the information needed to support improved local-level planning and forest management in such areas
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