QUANTIFICATION OF FOREST GROWING STOCK USING REMOTE SENSING DATA FOR PLANNING AND MANAGEMENT: A CASE STUDY OF TIKAULI FOREST IN CHITAWAN DISTRICT, NEPAL

摘要

Planners and decision-makers in Nepal are increasingly facing the challenge of responding to forest issues at local, national and regional level. Therefore, Quantification of forest growing stock is necessary for better management and planning because forest of Nepal can be seen as a source of timber and non-timber products. It is also a source of income, fulfills the necessities for rural population, functions as the basis for important generators of industrial economic activities, and works as the basis of environmental protection and watershed management for millions of people. The Nepalese forest managers like the respective forest departments, and national institutes like the Institute of Forestry have, therefore, a serious responsibility to manage these forests for the maximum benefit of present citizens of Nepal and future generation. In recent years, satellite remote sensing has emerged as one of the powerful technology for generation of spatial information, due to number of inherent characters that the satellite data had possessed, such as repetitive, synoptic view, availability of data in inaccessible areas, and digital nature of data. Remote sensing coupled with GIS and GPS has completely revolutionized the forest natural resources quantification and mapping for sound planning and management of forest resources. In the present study, the LANDSAT TM digital data of January 1998 has been digitally interpreted and forest has been classified into different forest types on the basis of density classes. Stratified random sampling method has been used for determinaton of number of sampling plots for collection of ground inventory data. Area estimation on the basis of digitally classified image of different forest and non-forest cover types has been carried out. With the help of GIS different layers were digitized and maps were produced. Using local volume table derived from general volume table, the volumes per hectare of individual forest cover types for the whole forest area were estimated. Similarly the growing stock per hectare in different blocks slopes, aspects, elevations were estimated.