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Nepal’s forest cover nearly doubled over the last three decades. While Community Forest (CF) management and agricultural abandonment are primary drivers of forest cover expansion, the contribution of afforestation on privately managed land is not well documented. We mapped forest cover change from 1988 through 2016 in 40 privately managed sites that transitioned from agriculture to forest and assessed how agricultural abandonment influenced private land management and afforestation. We used a mixed method analysis to integrate our 29- year Landsat satellite image-based record of annual forest cover with interview data on historical land cover and land use dynamics from 65 land managers in Bagmati Province. We find that privately managed land accounted for 37% of local forest cover gain, with mean forest area within private forests growing from 9% to 59%. Land managers identified two factors driving these gains on private land: implementation of CF man- agement in adjacent government forests and out-migration. These previously undocumented linkages between forest cover gain on private land and CF management merits further research in community forests and calls for greater policy and technical support for small-scale timber growers and rural households who rely on private forests for income generation.
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Green Vegetation Cover Has Steadily Increased since Establishment of Community Forests in Western Chitwan, Nepal
Community forests have been established worldwide to sustainably manage forest ecosystem services while maintaining the livelihoods of local residents. The Chitwan National Park in Nepal is a world-renowned biodiversity hotspot, where community forests were consolidated in the park’s buffer zone after 1993. These western Chitwan community forests stand as the frontiers of human–environment interactions, nurturing endangered large mammal species while providing significant natural resources for local residents. Nevertheless, no systematic forest cover assessment has been conducted for these forests since their establishment. In this study, we examined the green vegetation dynamics of these community forests for the years 1988–2018 using Landsat surface reflectance products. Combining an automatic water extraction index, spectral mixture analysis and the normalized difference fraction index (NDFI), we developed water masks and quantified the water-adjusted green vegetation fractions and NDFI values in the forests. Results showed that all forests have been continuously greening up since their establishment, and the average green vegetation cover of all forests increased from approximately 30% in 1988 to above 70% in 2018. With possible contributions from the invasion of exotic understory plant species, we credit community forestry programs for some of the green-up signals. Monitoring of forest vegetation dynamics is critical for evaluating the effectiveness of community forestry as well as developing sustainable forest management policies. Our research will provide positive feedbacks to local community forest committees and users.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1826839
- PAR ID:
- 10287826
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Remote Sensing
- Volume:
- 12
- Issue:
- 24
- ISSN:
- 2072-4292
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 4071
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Journal Article:
- https://doi.org/10.3390/rs12244071
