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Forestry
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Forest Resources Study in Mongolia
using Remote Sensing and GIS
B. Enkhtuvshin, M. Ganzorig, D. Amarsaikhan, H. Tulgaa
Informatics Centres, Mangolian Academy of Sciences
Av. Enkhtaivan - 54B, Ulaanbaatar-51, Mangolia
Abstract
Forest inventories and studies require and extensive use of RS data. To make a rapid decision making the forest management agencies need the real time up-to-date information. The aim of our study is to detect the forest changes and carry out the related analysis. For this purpose, multitemporal RS and GIS data were compiles within the ERDAS environment. As a result of the analysis forest changes for more than 10 years and the anthropogenic influences have been determined.
Introduction
Forest management requires reliable inventory data and the maps indicating current state of the forest area. Forests and forest land are an important natural resource in many part of the world and provide the raw material for a wide range of wood based industries (5). Deforestation has become a global problem in many developing countries and it has a direct correlation with population density, and the resource on forest resources is caused mainly by ever increasing populations and some development activities (94). Mongolia has abundant forest recourse in comparison with its over 2 million inhabits.
However, the forests are decreasing because of different natural and anthropogenic influences. One of the reasons could be a rapid growth of population and urbanization process for example, during the last decades, the population and area of Ulaanbataar have been significantly increased. RS provides a real time information on the status and condition of the forests. Integrating RS data with other traditional and ground truth information one can performa a truth information one can perform a through analysis and advise the forest managers for better planning.
Test Area and Data Sources
As a rest site 'Bogd-Uul' mountain situate in the central part of Mongolia, near the Ulaanbaatar city was selected. The mountain is the nature protected area covered by the forest ecosystem having about 60% of uniformly distributed deciduous forest. (Fig. 1).
Figure 1 Location of the area
For the forest change study the following data have been used :
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Forest taxonomical map of 1963, scale 1:50, 000
- Forest taxonomical map of 1988, scale 1:50, 000
- Topographic map, scale 1:50,000
- AFA analogue panchromatic data of 1962, 1963, 1975
- SPOT-XS of 1986
- SPOT PAN of 1989
- Land sat TM (7 bands) of 1988
- Ground truth data
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