Forest change detection in Dhaka Forest Division, Bangladesh | |
| Author | Iqbal, Md. Zaheer |
| Call Number | AIT Thesis no.RS-06-14 |
| Subject(s) | Forest management--Social aspects--Bangladesh Geographic information systems--Bangladesh |
| Note | A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science |
| Publisher | Asian Institute of Technology |
| Abstract | Dhaka forest division is situated in the central region of Bangladesh and it is tropical moist deciduous in nature. The dominant tree is Sal (Shorea robusta). Once controlled by the local landlords this forest area has been owned and managed by government forest department since last 50 years. Overcrowded population together with land tenural problem resulted serious encroachment and illegal felling in the study area. To overcome this problem forest department has been implementing participatory forest plantations by planting evergreen exotic species. This effort resulted a positive change in tree cover but loss of natural forest still persists. Till now, changes in this forest area have not been detected either by field survey or applying remote sensing and GIS. This study focuses to detect the forest changes in Dhaka forest division using remote sensing and GIS for the period if 1991-2004. Three different images of Landast satellite were used to get land cover of the study area using Supervised classification method. GIS was integrated with remote sensing to find out forest changes. Thus, the major outcomes of the study are: Z- firstly, land cover for the three different years and secondly forest changes for the study period. The study describes how accessibility to forest effects forest changes. Major road networks and highly dense populated area were considered for this analysis. GIS buffering was used to achieve desired result. This study considered the findings of forest changes and accessibility analysis. Considering the findings forest management recommendations have been developed. These recommendations would be a guideline for future forest management. During 1991-2004, natural forest shows a decrease of 8.38% but forest plantation increases at 326",0. Although natural forest has been decreased but due to huge plantation establishment, the total forest cover increased 17% during this period. This is the success of social forestry/ participatory forestry in the Dhaka forest division |
| Year | 2006 |
| Type | Thesis |
| School | School of Engineering and Technology (SET) |
| Department | Department of Information and Communications Technologies (DICT) |
| Academic Program/FoS | Remote Sensing (RS) |
| Chairperson(s) | Chen, Xiaoyong |
| Examination Committee(s) | Susaki, Junichi;Samarasakoon, Lal;Shrestha, Rajendra |
| Scholarship Donor(s) | Ministry of Environment and Forest, Bangladesh |
| Degree | Thesis (M.Sc.) - Asian Institute of Technology, 2006 |