SPATIOTEMPORAL ASSESSMENT OF LULC CHANGE AND CARBON SEQUESTRATION IN KPK DURING PAST THREE DECADES USING GEOSPATIAL TECHNIQUES

Abstract

The importance of forests is hard to underestimate. Seeing as forests are of so much value, several studies have been done to assess forest cover, both on small and large scale. Natural and human-caused characters that can be seen on the surface of Earth is Land cover. Land use, on the other hand, points out events that take place there and its present use. Land Use and Land Cover caused by human actions such as deforestation, are one of the crucial elements of global forest cover change. Remote sensing is a tool that is much essential for producing maps depicting Land use and Land cover by means of image classification. Supervised Image Classification was applied while focusing on forest area in the AOI, over the past three decades (1990-2020). This was done for classifying and mapping changes in land use and cover. This research also includes carbon stock assessment over the study period. The major LULC classified were Agricultural land, Water bodies, Forest area, Settlement and Others. For an effective Image Classification, various aspects had to be considered. Although forest area reduced from 1990 to 2009, a sharp increase was seen in the next decade (between 2009 and 2020) by 56%. This can be linked to new plantations under BTTAP in the region. Almost 836 km2 of land was found to be covered with forests. The net change was recorded as a 32% increase in forest land in the study area over three decades. Same trend was seen in Carbon stocks. While carbon stocks decreased from 1990 to 2009, they increased by 408 tons per km2 in the last decade. Overall, classification accuracy of the study fell between 76.8% and 83.5% and hence the data and classified images can be used for additional research. The study offers important pieces of information which environment managers and decisionvii makers can utilize to encourage plantation of trees and save existing forests in the country to combat climate change.