PROPOSAL

FOREST CHANGE DETECTION OF DIAMER DISTRICT GILGIT BALTISTAN

MAJIDA PRVEEN
Disaster management: University of Peshawar

1. INTRODUCTION:
Complex relationship between human behavior and forest change causes a major challenge for
developmental projects, policy makers, and environmental organizations that aim to improve forest
management. (Jane Southworth and Catherine Tucker 2001)
The natural environmental limitations are major issues for the people living in mountainous regions that
have forced them to spread agricultural activities across altitudes and cut of the forest areas to full fill the
agricultural needs. Environmental condition for agriculture and slow generation of natural vegetation is
also unfavorable for forest extension in these areas.
Forest management is necessary to stop deforestation and improvement of forest habitation in mountain
areas.
Forest mapping has got special consideration worldwide due to its importance for environment
and economy of the countries. They are using modern technologies like GIS and remote sensing for better
management of forest.

Pakistan is extended over a large area from the Arabian Sea to the Northern Mountains. About
5% land of Pakistan is covered with forest. Most of the natural forest masses of Pakistan are
concentrated in the mountainous ranges of the north, where more than 60% of the country’s
natural forest are found. The rest of the forest resources are distributed among the south
western mountains of Balochistan, plains of Punjab and Sindh and coastal areas of Arabian Sea.
The forest of Pakistan is important source of lumper, paper, fuel wood, latex, medicine and
other products.

The Northern Areas of Pakistan formally known as Gilgit-Baltistan (GB). It covers some
72496sq.km and bordering with China, Afghanistan and India. It comprises seven districts
namely Gilgit, Ghizer, Hunza-Nager, Diamer, Astor, Ganchay and Skardu. GB is rich in flora, fauna
and natural features. The northern mountain system consists of Karakoram, Hindukush and
Himalayas. They have huge masses of snow, glaciers and more than 50 peaks of over 6500m in
height. Gilgit-Baltistan has five of the world’s seventeen highest peaks. K2 (8811m) is the first
highest peak in Pakistan and second in the world.

Our study area is Diamer a, district of Gilgit-Baltistan province. They comprise of 10 Villages and
each village has its own forest and pasture for their livestock grazing with demarcated boundary
lines to other villages. (Sher Wali Khan and Surrya Khatoon, 2007)

Diamer is the gateway district to GB. The Karakoram Highway and Naran-Kaghan roads enter
into Diamer valley to give passage to GB. It is located at 35°26’5.6”N, 73°56’31.56”E, and cover
7234sq.km. Its population was 135000 in 1998. Some important valleys in Diamer district are
Darel, Tangir, Chilas, Buner Das and Raikot. The famous Nanga Parbat and Fairy Meadows are
also in this district. Shina is native language of this district but English and urdu are also spoken
with foreigners. The main forests found in the district are Goharabad, Darel, Tangir, Chilas,Thor
and Gonarfarm.
Total forest covered area of Diamer district is 30960 Area (ha). Chilas, Darel and Tangir tehsils
are classified as private forest owned by tribal communities of Diamer district.
Source: NAFD 2003 (Northern Areas Forest Deportment)
 Under the current system in Pakistan there are no strict rules to stop the people from cutting off
the valuable assets of the country, due to which most of the total forest area is decreasing in the
country.
The study deals with forest cover changes in the mountainous areas of Diamer between 1990,
2000 and 2010. The research paper will discuss the change detection and change rate of forest
in the study area. Finally the finding and results will be presented with remedial offers.

The most frequently used technique for mapping forests or change rates is visual and digital
analysis of satellite data (Hall et al 1991)
The study will not only focus on mapping changes but also interpret land use, community role
governmental role and change trend by image analysis.

2. RESEARCH OBJECTIVE:
The main objectives of the study are.
1. To identify forest density and distribution in the study area.
2. Change detection and rate of change in the study area.
3. To identify the causes of change.
4. To identify the major threats to forest in the study area.
5. To compare the involvement of community and government in forest activities.

3. DATA COLLECTION:
Two types of data sets will be used in the research.

3.1.1. Primary Data:

 Vector data will be created by digitizing the toposheets wherever necessary.
 Questionnaire. (to get information about forest from local communities)

3.1.2. SECONDARY DATA:

 Multispectral Landsat images of 30m resolution of the study area, with 10
years interval will be downloaded from the USGS website.
 Attribute data i-e. Population data, annual precipitation data, total forest
covered area etc. will be collected from DCR of GB and other related
departments like forest department etc.
4. RESEARCH METHODOLOGY:
To conduct this research the following steps will be performed.

(Chart 1) FLOW CHART FOR RESEARCH METHODOLOGY:

Toposheet Landsat 1 Landsat 2 Landsat 3

Image enhancement
Scanning

Image Processing

NDVI
Georeferencing

Result/Change Detection

Digitization & Attribute

data
Comparison

Final Analysis

Recommendations
4.1. METHODOLOGY PERFORMED ON VECTOR DATA.

To retrieve the vector data, the toposheets of the study area of scale 1:50000 will be
scanned and import to ArcGis 10.1. WGS 1984 coordinate system will be applied to
georeference the scanned images. It will be digitized and the table will be filled by their attribute
data.

The study area will be divided to get different data types and the following vector data will be
obtained after digitization.

 boundry.shp
 roads.shp
 watershed.shp
 agricultural lands.shp
 settlement.shp

4.2. METHODOLOGY PERFORMED ON RASTER DATA.

Multispectral Landsat images of 30m resolution with 10 years interval (1990, 2000 and
2010) will be downloaded from the USGS website. ILWIS 3.4 software will be used for image
enhancement like stretching, filtering, histogram equalization, color composition and color
separation. The enhanced images will be imported to ArcGIS 10.1.
For further processing NDVI tool will be used to extract vegetation cover from other land covers
like barren land, settlement and watershed etc. NDVI classify multispectral images into groups
having values from -1 to +1, where the digital values having the values near to -1 will be shown
as non-vegetation area and values from zero to +1 shows vegetation cover areas .The following
formula is used in NDVI.

NDVI= NIR-RED/NIR+RED

NDVI will be activated from window followed by image analysis tool in the menu bar.
For clear visualization the RGB bands will be re arranged into Red and Infrared band. The landsat
images are composed of seven different bands i-e 1 to 7. The 4th, 3rd and 2nd bands of Landsat
image will be used to show TCC. As NDVI will be used, so Red band and Infrared band will be
needed, the color Infrared band will be created by the composition of 5th band for red, 4th for
green and 3rd bands for blue.
In “image analysis tool” the “image analysis option” will be clicked to check ON NDVI, here we
will be having two options.
 Use wavelength
 Scientific method

The scientific method will be checked ON as the values from -1 to +1 will be required. In this box
the band numbers can also be selected as band 5 for infrared and band 4 will be corresponded
for red band used in Landsat images. “Image” in “image analysis window” will be selected, and
NDVI icon will be check ON for NDVI calculation in processing menu.
 After running NDVI calculation the color will be assign to resultant grey image as red and green
color for low vegetation and high vegetation contents respectively. Threshold values will be
assigned by histogram equalizing or break values.

NDVI images are temporary layers so it will be saved in raster format. The resultant map will be
having values from -1 to +1.

EVI is a modern technique for detecting forest change. It will also be used to classify the
vegetated and no vegetated areas.

5. RESULT AND ANALYSIS:

The resultant maps will be compared and further Analysis will be made to derive some
meaningful result.

6. FINAL ANALYSIS:
Final analysis will be made based on the resultant maps of raster and vector data. This
will lead to conclusion and recommendations.

7. LEGAL AND ETHICAL ISSUES:

The following issues may be faced while conducting the research.
 SDI (Spatial Data Infrastructure).
 Government restrictions.
 Community response.
 Security issues in the study area.
 Resource limitation.

8. REFERENCES:
The Influence of Accessibility, Local Institutions, and Socioeconomic Factors on Forest
Cover Change in the Mountains of Western Honduras
Author(s): Jane Southworth and Catherine Tucker
Source: Mountain Research and Development, Vol. 21, No. 3 (Aug., 2001), pp.276-283