INTEGRATION OF REMOTELY SENSED DATA AND FOREST LANDSCAPE PATTERN ANALYSIS IN SAKAERAT BIOSPHERE RESERVE
Keywords:
Sakaerat Biosphere Reserve, landscape metrics, landscape ecology, forest ecology, forest restoration and management planAbstract
This research aims to investigate forest landscape pattern changes in the Sakaerat Biosphere Reserve (SBR), and to classify and assess changes of multi-temporal forest landscape types, and analyze patterns using landscape metrics from 1980-2010. Landscape classification and assessment of 6 landscape types showed the natural forest landscape was the major landscape type and occupied an area of 46.23% to 44.40%. Landscape changes had occurred mostly in disturbed forest, decreasing from 10.22% to 3.99%, while forest plantations and urban and built-up landscapes increased from 1.61% to 3.71% and 1.36% to 2.98%, respectively. More importantly, the number of patches, mean proximity, and interspersion juxtaposition indices assisted in determining the forest landscape pattern changes. The trends of change in the indices’ values of forest landscape types were subsequently used in relation to gains and losses in the context of forest landscape ecology to set up the priority levels of recommendations on a forest restoration and management plan. Therefore, this evaluation showed the priority levels of all forest landscape types in each of the management zones. As a result, recommendations in the core zones of natural forest, disturbed forest, and forest plantation landscapes were strictly limited to minimum restoration and management, but not limited to natural regeneration and succession; while in the buffer and transition zones, forest rehabilitation and reforestation, including regular patrolling and forest fire control were recommended. In conclusion the integration of remotely sensed data and landscape metrics can beapplied to quantify landscape pattern characteristics that directly relate to forest landscape ecology and to obtain important ecological landscape information for a forest resources restoration and management plan.
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