FOREST COVER CHANGE DETECTION AND ITS IMPACT ON RAINFALL PATTERNIN THAK VALLEY (PAKISTAN)

Abstract

The study was carried out to focus on issues of deforestation of rangeland as natural resources during recent decades on a large scale. This rapid deforestation made great effect on the ecology, environment, health and economy of the country. Keeping all these aspects in views it was necessary to carry out forest cover change detection by focusing on the monitoring of the present and past status of forests cover and other related objects using remote sensing and GIS technique. Assessment of deforestation in Thak valley was carried out on temporal basis to elaborate the forests cover change from 1989 to 2009 using Landsat satellite data. Supervised classification and visual interpretation techniques were applied on each image. The integrated classes such as snow covered area, built up area, vegetation related to crop land and forest, water body, bare soil were created and major objects and land cover built-up area were also digitized. The statistical analysis detected a positive relation between two natural factors i.e. rainfall and forest through trend line. It was identified that rainfall pattern also decreased due to forest degradation.