Home > Geospatial Application Papers > Environment > Forest Management


Abstract

Use of remote sensing to analyze the loss of forestland in Nepal

Santosh Tripathi
Master's Student
Asian Institute of Technology, Thailand
tripatthi@yahoo.com

Rajesh Bahadur Thapa
Research Associate
Asian Institute of Technology, Thailand


ABSTRACT
Forests constitute one of the most important resources for any country. For a country like Nepal where people still depend on forests for the fodder for the cattle and fuel for the cooking, its importance cannot be overemphasized. Like any other developing country Nepal suffers from the loss of forests. However, because of the ongoing violent internal conflict it has not been possible to assess the decline in forestland for about past one decade. In this study, we try to find out the exact percentage of forestland in Nepal at different points in time during the last two decade. In the process we analyze the pattern of loss of forestland in Nepal and the impact of internal conflict on the forests. To achieve this time series datasets of MODIS (Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer) have been used augmented by some ground truths. Moreover, analyzing the data so huge requires a lot of computational power which is possible only through parallel computation. To this end, Optima, the cluster computer at AIT has been used for the analysis.