Geo-Eye

Abstract

Degradation of forest decreases the tree cover, the biodiversity in the forest and results in the changes to a lower state of the forest structure. Continued degradation of the forests can lead to the destruction of the entire forest cover and biodiversity due to anthropogenic and environmental changes. The present study area 33% of the area is under forest cover with vastly diversified flora and fauna, which are affected and destroyed due to changing climate, natural calamities, and human interventions.In this situation, the study of Forest Cover Change and Vulnerability Analysis (FCVA) in Kallar watershed; part of Nilgiri biosphere reserve is unavoidable. Geospatial technologies along with Multi-Criteria Evaluation (MCE) based forest vulnerability analysis were adopted in this study. To assess the vulnerability, three major factors were considered viz., accessibility (road proximity, distance from settlement, slope, and elevation), demographic (population density), and forest cover types. The factors weights and ranks have been assigned through pair-wise comparison method; fuzzy membership function has been applied to assign subfactors weights. The vulnerability map categorizes the forest into four vulnerable zones viz., critical, highly vulnerable, moderately vulnerable, and least vulnerable zones. The resultant map is important in forest conservation by the forest department as highly vulnerable areas, which can be put into high consideration; at the same time, involving the people’s participation is to engage in the sustainable forest management process.

Keywords: Biodiversity, Environmental change, Vulnerability, Geospatial technology