Trends of land cover change in a key biological corridor in Central Nepal

Abstract

Abstract. Neupane K, Gautam AP, Regmi A. 2017. Trends of land cover change in a key biological corridor in Central Nepal. Asian J For 1: 64-69. Monitoring changes in biophysical features of the earth is useful to assess the impacts of human activities on the environment. This effort is essential to evaluate, for example, the outcome of policy implementation. This study analyzed changes in land cover in one of the key biological corridors in Central Nepal, the Barandabhar Corridor located in Chitwan District, during the last two decades (i.e. 1991 to 2013). The study used satellite imageries (Landsat 5 TM of 1991 and Landsat 8 OLI_TIRS of 2013) and the results were cross-checked with primary data collected from the field to investigate the drivers of land cover change. Supervised Maximum Likelihood method of image classification was used to produce the land cover maps for 1991 and 2013. The result showed that forest cover in the corridor increased by 7.03% while the coverage of shrubland, water bodies and other land cover types (open lands, sand and roads) decreased during the study period. The implementation of community-based forest management programs, decreasing dependency of local communities on forest resources, and increasing awareness in conservation among the local people are found to be the main causes of the increase in forest cover.