Quantitative Assessment of Forest Cover Change of a Part of Bandarban Hill Tracts Using NDVI Techniques

Biswajit Nath^1,

¹Department of Geography and Environmental Studies, Faculty of Biological Sciences, University of Chittagong, Chittagong, Bangladesh

Cite this paper

Biswajit Nath. Quantitative Assessment of Forest Cover Change of a Part of Bandarban Hill Tracts Using NDVI Techniques. Journal of Geosciences and Geomatics. 2014; 2(1):21-27. doi: 10.12691/JGG-2-1-4

Abstract

Bandarban Hill Tracts is facing grave environmental problems with fast depletion of its natural resources which is ultimately threatening the existence of forest cover. Monitoring the change of forest cover using multi temporal Landsat TM data (i.e. 1989, 2001 and 2010) for the Part of Bandarban Hill Tracts and exact evaluation of anthropogenic intervention on the natural environment can be assessed. Present research is focusing on along the middle course of Matamuhuri River’s adjoining areas. The Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) technique was applied to quantify the forest cover changes of these regions from 1989-2010. Three different time periods NDVI maps were generated and quantitative data were classified using ERDAS Imagine and ArcGIS software respectively. Finally NDVI derived maps of 1989 and 2010 were crossed to generate overall change detection map. The study reveals that forest cover of this region has changed significantly during 1989-2010 due to natural and different anthropogenic activities (i.e. hill erosion, illegal forest cutting, jhum cultivation, forest fire, tobacco farming, etc.). Out of the total area of 16852.32 hectare, the decreased category shows 15.47%, followed by some decrease 29.55%. The area needs special protection because forest cover is decreasing and some decreasing at the rate of 0.74% and 1.41% per year respectively.

Keywords

quantitative assessment, forest cover change, NDVI, Bandarban Hill Tracts

Copyright

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/

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